Season
One: “Civilization” (The Sarcasm Episode)
Plot: The teaser opens in the Situation
Room. In response to
Archer’s question about what’s out there in the vicinity,
T’Pol lists first a nebula, then a “cluster of three neutron stars,
very rare” but is interrupted by Trip’s, you guessed it, sarcastic,
“How ‘bout that? Three
stone cold stars. Pretty exciting,
huh?” as he drawls out
“stone,” and “cold” to emphasize their lack of
appeal. When a visibly
disappointed Archer asks if there’s anything else, Trip responds with
just a hint of glee, “There is one other thing, might be worth swingin’
by to take a look,” and then cannot keep the joy and excitement out of
his voice, “A Menshara class planet—about 4 ½ light years away!”
Lifesigns?
Archer wonders. A delighted Trip
responds, “Only about 500 million.
If our scans are right, there’s a whole civilization down
there.” And now, starting
with Mayweather’s infectious grin, the other bridge officers start
smiling, revealing they’ve intentionally let T’Pol set the agenda
so as to keep Archer in the dark for as long as possible.
When
the episode continues after the sarcasm free theme song and 50 minute
commercial break the crew are checking out the planet; they’ve discovered
it’s pre-industrial.
T’Pol advises against a landing party, noting that it would be
against protocols. Trip sneers
back, “Those are Vulcan protocols, not human.” She flounces back that Starfleet would
be out of their minds not to adopt them, but not exactly in those words. More Vulcan-like. They bicker a bit longer while
T’Pol tries to limit their contact to sensors. Archer finally calls for a close-up on the inhabitants. With the make-up budget down, the
locals—the Acali—prove to be almost identical to humans, and Archer
moves noticeably over to Trip’s station to ask what he thinks. Does our Trippie disagree with his
captain? What do you think? They’re heading for the dress-up
box before T’Pol can take a breath.
A
couple of scenes with Hoshi establish her excitement about the multiple new
languages she could study as well as her nervousness about going on a landing
party. Shortly after this
T’Pol brings Archer evidence of neutrino emissions. Trip reacts for the
audience: “These people
don’t even have indoor plumbing!” It looks like someone else is down there in dress
up clothes. The captain looks grim,
but there’s an “oh goody!” in there somewhere. He was going anyway, but now he has a
legitimate reason to investigate.
Archer,
Hoshi, Trip and T’Pol take a shuttlepod planetside—not exactly to
T’Pol’s preferred cornfield location, but sufficiently outside the
city where the emissions are concentrated to deflect attention. On the way Trip does a cutie when he
mimes, ‘your ears are showing’ to T’Pol whose long dark wig
makes her look like a “Lord of the Rings” wannabe. On the surface they divide up into
girls and guys. The girls, looking
fetching in renaissance garb head off for city center where they encounter
several seriously ill Acali. The guys, looking pretty cute themselves (although
Trip’s cape/mantle thingy looks a size or two too large), zero in on the
shop where the emissions are concentrated….but they are stymied by the
locked door.
Damn. X-ty light years from home and our
first mission is breaking and entering.
(Trekdom cheered when Archer uttered the words even as we were thinking
them.) Trip pulls out a
handy-dandy 22nd century lock-picking tool and sooner than you can
say pan-fried catfish they’re in.
Of course the door to the secret basement has a fancier lock (TRIP!
“Say Friend
and enter!”), but before they can check it out, an attractive
30-something woman threatens them with a mini-crossbow, demanding
information. T’Pol
conveniently appears, but she can’t be bothered with small talk, and
stuns her with a phaser. When
Archer asks her to restrain her un-Vulcanlike trigger-finger, she deadpans
“I’ll try” in one of the worst-delivered lines of the
season. [I kind of expected her to
roll her eyes and speak to the camera: “Whadaya expect? This whole scene is completely out of
character for me!],
but no, the show goes on like always.
Trip, T’Pol and Hoshi head back to the shuttlepod while Archer
takes the fallen woman home, watching over her until she awakes. [In a hopeful sign that the writers are
at least trying to give the stories some coherence, T’Pol had pointedly
given the Enterprise landing party forgeries of “necessary”
identification papers. So, Archer
now has a way to know where to take her.]
Once awake, the now-identified Riann is suspicious of Archer’s
origins, but intrigued enough not to throw him out. The conversation goes something like “Smirk, parry,
smile,” “Deflect,
smile, parry” “Eye
roll, parry, smile.” Given
enough time these two might get it together, but at this rate they’ll
be lucky to exchange phone numbers before the episode is over.
In
the morning Archer and Trip (apparently pulled out of the ether he’d been
stored in while “Jon” dallied with Riann) go back to the now-open
shop to encounter Garos.
We know this oily guy is the villain the minute he opens his mouth. “Excuse me,” says Archer,
“do you have a paper towel?”
No, what he really does is set up the unsuspecting, but
willing-to-play-along Trip as an “amateur collector.” “Uhhhh….those look interestin’” Trip
bumbles, but Garos is not fooled, especially after Trip doesn’t recognize
the local deity.
“You’re not from around here,” he oozes.
“And
neither are you!” snaps Archer.
“Your DNA doesn’t match the locals.” (Take that! oily
man!)
“Nyah,
nyah, Neither does yours!” counters oily man. “How’d you find me?”
Trip
slings back a vinegary, “We picked up the signature from your
reactor.” (Do we look stupid?)
Garos
drips another bucketload of grease about being an “explorer” from
the Melurinan system who only wanted to settle down on this lovely planet and
manufacture the occasional boot with his 500million gigagule reactor while the
silly, superstitious apothecary just wants to blame him for the plague because
he’s new. Trip’s and
Archer’s eyes roll in synchrony, but oily man is saved by the fortuitous
appearance of a customer.
The
next scene Archer shows up at Riann’s laboratory with T’Pol. Although it made sense for her to do
the scans there since she’s the science officer, *I* was wondering,
Where’s Trip? Waiting on the
sidewalk? Changing the plugs in
the shuttlepod? And for that matter, where’s Hoshi? They had to take her down
because of her translating skills, but she never did anything.
Anyway.
Archer
introduces his “colleague,” T’Pol as another
“scientist.” Riann
gives the shapely T’Pol the once over and does the ‘Oh.
Puhleeze.’ eyeroll but lets her look around as long as she
“doesn’t touch anything.” Meanwhile Archer and Riann dance verbally and physically
around her central table.
“Light that burner.”
“Now put this in that beaker.” “Turn off the flame.” …all interspersed between conversation about the
plague she has been investigating.
Smile. Parry. Deflect. And so it goes. T’Pol scans what she needs and is ready to go, but Archer
wants to stay to see if he can “find out more.” She leaves for Enterprise,
managing to make “Enjoy your tea” sound like “Yeah, Right,
Horn-boy!” and the eyeroll
count continues.
Back
on Enterprise Phlox is impressed with Riann’s scientific methodology and
discovers that the “plague” is caused by
‘tetracyanate622’ contaminating the water.
Down
on the planet Archer and Riann stake out the curio shop hoping to trail one of
the suspicious characters.
Where’s Trip? Who
knows? Taking a nap? Eating pie? Vanished into a writer’s aporia? Not here. Not with T’Pol.
So.
Archer
gets to play James T. Kirk when the universal translator goes on the
blink. He tries to cover by
kissing Riann while frantically pushing the reset button. CONTROL ALT DELETE! Why isn’t it working?!?!?! He gets in another smooch using the universal cornball maneuver and
recovers nicely by pretending someone was walking by. Riann rolls her eyes for the rest of us, but she’s interested.
The
midnight connection arrives with a hand-pulled cart, loads a bunch of crates
and takes off, and from here on the plot takes off with him shifting into
straight adventure mode. Archer
and Riann follow him to the woods where they see a big ass space ship, right
out of the X-Files, shine a tractor-beam light thingy and lift the crates into
the interior. Immediately
afterward a planetside alien starts shooting phaser-like fire at them, but
Archer defeats him.
Back
at the shop Archer and Riann get into the basement (Why is it so easy NOW?) and
discover a huge mining operation.
They find the reactor, but it’s shielded. Our Man Trip wants to come down and
have a crack at it. (OH, There’s Trip!. He’s been at the
engineering station of the bridge!)
but Archer says to wait. He
and Riann debate about which button to push and sure enough hit the wrong one,
setting off alarms.
Garos
contacts T’Pol on the bridge saying Archer’s dead. This planet isn’t big enough for
both of them, so she’d better go.
Then, like the bad guy he is, he shoots before Enterprise gets a chance
to draw. The ship rocks (in space,
no less!) and Trip shuts off a burning overhead monitor (Brave Trip!). Meanwhile Archer works furiously to
shut down the forcefield while sleazy Garos tries to get them to open the
cellar door by pretending he’s going to let them go. Nobody even bothers to roll an eye
because they’re too busy trying to save their asses. Sarcasm goes on hold for the remainder
of the episode.
Back
on Enterprise Reed reports that the Melurian ship is charging weapons. T’Pol orders Mayweather to
prepare to breakout of orbit. Trip
goes ballistic. Righteous as the
threat of hellfire he countermands her, “Belay that! Keep this ship right where it
is!” rising upright even as he speaks. T’Pol reminds him that she outranks him but he
doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
He orders Billy from engineering to prepare to vent the nacelles. I didn’t do my warp field theory
homework last week, but I think that means the ship would be dead in the
water—a favorite Tripism, so that seems likely. Turning to T’Pol he shouts, “We’re not
going anywhere!” ‘I’m
not leaving the Captain! You heartless Vulcan bitch!’ hangs unsaid.
But
apparently T’Pol didn’t get the memo about pocketing the
sarcasm. Standing ten feet away
she pins him against the monitors with actual daggers coming out of her eyes. In a voice that would freeze a volcano
she explains Word. By. Word. that she didn’t say, “leave
orbit,” she said, “prepare to leave orbit.”
And that she had no intention of leaving the captain, “dead or
alive.”
oh.
Trip
nods acceptance, contrite. [So
literal, those Vulcans.
What’s he supposed to think?]
Planetside,
Archer finally gets the field down and Trip heads for the turbolift even as the
ship takes another hit. Down at
the transporter he struggles to enter the coordinates of the reactor while the
ship continues to be buffeted by weapons fire. Yay! Our guys
are going to steal the reactor!....but what are they going to do with it once
they have it? The Melurian ship is
right there. And much bigger.
T’Pol
now gets a chance to show her strategic abilities. She has Trip transport the
reactor first on to the ship, then directly in front of the Melurian ship. One torpedo blast from Reed and
it’s the Melurians who are dead in the water.
Meanwhile back on the planet, Archer gets into a firefight with Garos, but is
able to defeat him using a suggestion from Riann to heat the oil lamps in the
street. He set his phase pistol to
“boiling oil,” and the lamps explode in a mini version of
T’Pol’s strategy. The
moral here is obviously, Don’t try to deceive smart women, it only
makes them mean.
The
episodes ends back in Riann’s apothecary shop. Archer brings her enough
medicine to cure those affected, and after an awkward moment, they kiss.
The End.
Review: This was clearly the episode where the
producers were going to make good on their promise to make Enterprise more like the original Star
Trek. There were firefights, fistfights,
explosions, eleventh hour solutions, and the captain got to kiss the girl. They didn’t do it again. And for good reason.
Oh. It was all right, but it wasn’t
Jim and Bones and Spock. And it
was a mistake to make us think of them.
For one thing, Bakula plays Archer as far too gentlemanly and courtly to
convincingly sweep a lady off her feet on every planet. It’s not that he
couldn’t. He’s
handsome, and sexy, and very well built.
But Archer just doesn’t come across as a ladies man. The scenes with Diane DiLascio had a
certain charm because she played Riann as a smart woman who not only saw
through Archer’s deception about his identity, but saw and reacted to
their mutual attraction. The scene
in the lab works despite the old “I’m just making tea, did I you
think it was poison?” gimmick.
And it works because there are two smart women who understand Archer
better than he does himself. He
comes across as almost innocent and naïve to their (other?) worldly
understanding of the ways of men.
That’s
one reason why the kiss ruse is so unbelievable—not unbelievable that
they might be attracted to each other, unbelievable that this naïve,
gentlemanly man would use a kiss as an excuse to distract a strange woman. Kirk yes. Archer no.
So. While the plot was okay for a
“let’s go to a backward planet and rescue the natives” kind
of episode, the execution was wrong for the characters created for Enterprise. That in itself is a testimonial to the actors,
“Civilization” is but the seventh episode and already we have a
clear idea of what these characters should and should not be doing. Another glaring plot error was having
T’Pol shoot Riann instead of knocking her out with a Vulcan nerve
pinch. She didn’t have to
shoot her; it was completely out of character for a Vulcan to do so in those
circumstances; and the aftermath
was some very lame dialogue.
But
the fights were good. Archer wins this time—before he gets his first
season reputation as a punching bag. And the space battle was tense and
believable.
It
was also fun seeing the translator device break down—even if the plot
device was a bit lame, it’s nice to see that their technology isn’t
the answer to everything. In fact,
a lot of this episode was about using one’s wits rather than
technology. Riann is the poster
child for the dawn of the scientific revolution on her planet. We see her using scientific methodology
to try to solve the problem of the plague—she would, but she just
doesn’t have 500 years of scientific developments behind her to
help. We see her carefully
considering the options about which button to push to shut off the force field
around the reactor—more carefully than Archer. We see her figure out a way to defeat Garos using the
knowledge she has gained. And we
see T’Pol use her wits to defeat the much more powerful Melurian vessel.
Another
happy device in this episode is the replaying of themes first introduced in the
pilot. When events that
occur in one episode reoccur a few episodes later, the audience can begin to
trust the picture it has developed for each character. For example, the freshness and
excitement about exploring “strange new worlds” that dominated
“Broken Bow” radiates out of Trip’s face in the teaser. We
can almost hear him say, “Look, Cap’n! we found a planet with people like us!” Similarly, both Hoshi’s love of
languages and her nervousness about being in space get repeated in this
episode.
T’Pol’s
insistent restraint, which feels so much like chains to Archer and Trip, rings
true from “Broken Bow” through this episode as well. At this point the audience is still on
the side of Trip and the Captain and the writers set up our emotions to be
against T’Pol. We almost
shout at the screen: ‘Leave
them alone, spoilsport! Let them
go do what they want to do!’
It will not be until well into the second half of the season that the
crew—and the audience—begin to recognize that T’Pol was right
in advocating restraint.
I’ll
close by noting that “Civilization” shows Archer visibly aligned
with Trip. In the opening scene
after the teaser he makes a point of walking across the bridge to stand next to
Trip. He wants support for going
down to the planet, and he moves to the one man he knows will give it to him
unquestioningly. T’Pol is an
obstacle, and the two men work together against her. But by the end of the season, Archer will begin to look to
T’Pol first. We are able to
gauge his growing trust in her only because of episodes like
“Civilization” which show how far he had to go.
Trip
rating:
Hair
factor? Yep. Mussed, at least not the Regular Boy
comb over 1 point
Food
factor? Nada. Nobody gets anything but that one
little cup of tea Riann gives Archer!
How’s a body to survive? Zip.
Adorableness
Factor: The little “fix
your hair” bit in the shuttlepod was cute, but not high order
Adorable. Maybe an extra 5 points
Trip
gives T’Pol his WTF look:
yep, right before he countermands her order: 10 points.
Trip
Time: For third in line, yeah,
I think he did pretty well. 10
points.
Skin
factor. Nope. We do get to see Trip in alternative clothing, and that is always a
bonus—he even says, “M’feet would be a whole lot happier in
m’own boots.” But no
underwear and no skin. Alas.
Trip
Quotes: Nothing memorable. [Whadaya mean nothing memorable?! All Trip quotes are memorable. Exactly. None of these stand out from the rest—possibly
“We’re not going anywhere!” simply because of the forceful way Trinneer delivered it.]
Quality
Trip Time: This is only 26
points which according to our guidelines is okay, but less than stellar. Yet Trip had some good moments, so I
have to add 10 point for Quality Trip Time which boosts it up to 36
points. According to our
guidelines, that puts “Civilization” solidly as a “Good
Episode.”
Weeellll. Okay. Good minus maybe.
The
episode as an episode was a bit of a retread—the wrong plot for Archer in
particular. B-/C+
But
the Trip stuff was solid.